How do you claim that the "property" of all persons residing in the territory of the seceded states is "contraband of war"?
By what authority does a president have to seize all of a specific class of "property" in an entire state without allowing all citizens to have "due process" before their "property" is seized without compensation?
If a president has the power to *DECREE* that all of one class of property may be seized from all citizens residing in a particular area, then he has the same power to decree that all other classes of property be seized too.
If you make the argument that slaves are "contraband of war", are not cows and pigs and chickens and wagons and farm houses and carriages and trees and the very land itself not also "contraband of war"?
Why is one thing "contraband of war" and not every other thing as well? And if you are seizing "contraband of war" with no due process, then does not the United States government have the legal right to seize every f***ing thing?
And you are telling me the US constitution grants this sort of awesome powers to the President?
That's not how I understand the constitution. It doesn't go so far as to allow the President to ignore "due process" for American citizens.
Your right that the constitution does not give the executive this kind of power. However it does give the legislative the power to suppress insurrections/rebellions. They have done this by passing laws such as the militia acts in the 1790 as a result of the whiskey rebellion, and the force act during the nullification crisis. These acts delegated authority to the executive.
In 1861 and 1862 Congress passed the confiscation acts. This gave Lincoln the authority to issue the emancipation proclamation.
No matter how many times you neo-confederates claim Lincoln was a dictator he bent or broke the law surprisingly few times. I’d even argue maybe even less than other Presidents during times of war.